But an entire hour before that, Twitter
user Brittany J. Pullard (aka @BarBeeBrit) was
the first person to tweet the news, according to the below graph
posted by Twitter, courtesy of @isaach.

@isaach,
Twitter

@BarBeeBritt, who resides in Los Angeles and enjoys the Hollywood
club scene, as evident by her Twitter
feed, tweeted at 4:02pm PST to her then-799 followers:

Twitter

The tweet only received three retweets and @BarBreeBritt never
revealed how exactly she heard the news, but Twitter user
@AjaDiorNavy quickly had specific details of
Houston's passing at 4:15pm PST that weren't released to the
public until nearly 24 hours after the initial incident.

Once the AP tweeted the official statement from Houston's
publicist at 4:57pm PST, rapper Lil Wayne
quickly expressed his condolences and received 29,000 retweets,
according to Mediabistro.

Other celebrities voiced their sympathies as well, but after Lil
Wayne, the top tweets went to:

Justin Bieber (15,000 retweets): “just heard the
news. so crazy. One of the GREATEST VOICES EVER just passed. RIP
Whitney Houston. My prayers go out to her friends and family.”

Nicki Minaj (9,000 retweets): "Jesus Christ, not
Whitney Houston. Greatest of all time," as well as tweeting a
vintage photo of the late singer alongside Michael
Jackson.